


For So Works the Honeybee

by suitesamba



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: And another daughter, Beekeepinig Details, Bees, Fluff and Angst, John Has a Daughter, M/M, Mild Spoilers, Retirement, Sussex, h/c
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-14
Updated: 2014-02-14
Packaged: 2018-01-12 10:26:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1185173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suitesamba/pseuds/suitesamba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock and John retire to Sussex where Sherlock looks after bees and John looks after Sherlock. John isn’t much interested in the bees, but when Sherlock has an accident and can’t look after them properly, he steps in and shows his mettle.  A story about bees, transitions, and falling in love all over again.</p><p>Or, in which John learns to love the bees.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For So Works the Honeybee

**Author's Note:**

> Written for bluebellglowinginthedark for the Valentine's Day exchange on johnlockchallenges on Tumblr. Bluebellglowinginthedark prompted “retirement, bees, Sussex and growing old together” and requested fluff and/or smut.
> 
> I knew very little about beekeeping before I was given this prompt. I blame the prompter for my new desire to install beehives in my yard, even though I really don’t like honey all that much. I will warn anyone who wants to write about bees to not watch YouTube and Nature documentaries on bees. They are very addictive.
> 
> Thanks to the indomitable bk7brokemybrain for the pre-read and cheerleading, and to abrae for the same, and for asking for more Sherlock/John in the story after her first read-through. The additional 2500 words of this story are dedicated to abrae. Thanks also to my wonderful badgerlady for the Brit Picking, though we’re still wobbling about patios and lounge chairs.

  
ooOoo  
  


_\- He is not worthy of the honey-comb,  
That shuns the hives because the bees have stings -_  
William Shakespeare.

John listens with half an ear as Sherlock goes on about the bees.

They’re into their second year here, fifteen months since Sherlock hung up his consulting detective hat in the middle of a London winter and finally convinced John to retire with him to Sussex. To the South Downs, to the snug, stone cottage at the end of the long lane, surrounded by apple trees and gardens and wildflowers and roses and overgrown beds of mint and thyme and sage. It’s lovely, really, and he’s happy that Sherlock has the retirement he’s always wanted. And while John still dresses in his same old comfortable jumpers, Sherlock’s new moleskin trousers and button-down shirts might be a step down from his wardrobe in London, but he’s no less the lord of the manor here. John likes the new trousers, and sometimes catches Sherlock as he walks by and runs his hands over the sturdy but soft fabric, taut against the still perfect arse. The tailored suits and pressed shirts hang, forlorn and half-forgotten, in the spare bedroom, and when John misses the city and 221B and Sherlock’s coattails flapping in the air as he skids around a corner, he slips into the bedroom, opens the dressing room door, and steps inside, surrounding himself with the familiar touch and smell, the soft brush of combed wool, the lingering scent of London.

John knows he thinks of retirement differently than Sherlock does. He can’t help but consider it the beginning of the end. But for Sherlock, it’s the start of a new phase, a new adventure he put off at least five years because John’s life, his family, is all in London. Because John wasn’t ready. And John understands, and is fine with it, really fine. _Sherlock_ is his family. He loves the cottage, he loves Sherlock, but he can’t – he just _won’t_ – love the bees.

Perhaps he resents the bees for coming first when they set up house – no surprise there. The hives were installed near the apple orchard, in a place of honour chosen by Sherlock even before the papers were signed for the cottage. While John unpacked and dealt with getting the mains and television and Internet connected, Sherlock collected paint samples and debated the merits of painting the hives in traditional white or in greens and browns that blended in with the orchard. He debated, in fact, every facet of beekeeping, from hive components and materials to tools to protective clothing to the question of feeding the bees and using honey supers. There was nothing about bees that was unimportant, or uninteresting, to Sherlock. 

After the bees were established, along came the dog – a young, energetic setter mix that turned up soon after their arrival and took a liking to Sherlock, and who grew on John, as annoying things so often do. For his part, John still has Abby’s cat, an old, ill-tempered tom. The cat likes John and tolerates Sherlock, and has adapted to country life rather like John has, a curious observer more than an active participant. He sits at the window, spying on robins and starlings outside, fastidiously cleaning his paws and wiping his spotless face. 

Those first months, the bees dominated their existence. The hives, freshly painted, filled with old-style wood and wax frames, built out bit by bit with hexagonal combs by the industrious insects. The protective gear, gloves and gauntlets and veil, and the coverall that somehow fit Sherlock almost as well as the Belstaff did. The tools of beekeeping – the smoker and brushes and hive tool. But mostly the bees. Queens and drones and workers. So gloriously industrious. So entirely adaptable. Housekeepers, undertakers, nursemaids, attendants, builders, packers, fanners, foragers, guards. By early that first summer, Sherlock had two functional hives, and spent far more time with them than John had expected he would. He had devised every sort of experiment possible, and counted the bees on the apple blossoms and brown-eyed Susans and even on the dandelions, crawling around on the earth with a magnifying lens, taking photographs with his mobile and scribbling notes on index cards. He waves them at John sometimes, and shows him bar charts of bee visits by flower, time of day, temperature, wind direction and moon phase. But all John sees is that Sherlock has replaced his wall of case notes with stacks of bee cards, and while he was happy to tear down a London alley behind Sherlock, crawling through the grass and brambles of the Downs after bees has little appeal. It’s too safe, somehow. 

Too hard on the knees.

He begins to see that Sherlock has overcome one addiction by succumbing to another, but John suffers his own withdrawal pains in silence.

For his part, even with the pangs for the old life (an old life, he admits, that was becoming quite a bit less exciting with his arthritic shoulder and Sherlock’s boredom with the _same old mundane cases_ ), and his _bee aversion_ , as Sherlock calls it, John finds himself slowly settling into life in the country. The girls visit often enough, and Kate brings the little ones, who adore Granddad and Sherlock’s place, and that alone is nearly enough to make the entire move worthwhile. Of course, Abby is always good for an argument or two with her stepdad – their temperaments are similar, and both are given to pouts and bursts of frenzied energy. And there are the inevitable bee stings, especially since David is fascinated both with bees and with Sherlock. John definitely sees miniature beekeeper coveralls in little David’s future.

The house empties into quiet when they are gone, and John abandons his twice-reupholstered chair in favor of the worn spot on the sofa beside Sherlock. Sherlock tucks his bare feet under John’s thigh and wiggles his toes until his feet are wedged under John’s bum, then quirks an eyebrow at him. And John shakes his head slowly, only pretending to be exasperated, and eventually lets Sherlock pull him up off the sofa and lead him into their bedroom.

They may be retired, but they’re not old, though Abby is nearing thirty now, and John was well into his thirties when she was born. On Sunday afternoons like this one, when the house settles into silence after the girls and the children are gone back to London, they end up in bed together more often than not. Sometimes it’s hard to believe that they only started this fifteen years ago, this love no longer unvoiced, this touching no longer accidental. John remembers how hard he worked to keep it all together with Mary, to keep it whole and healthy for the girls, how hard he fought to try again when it finally crumbled and he ended up on Sherlock’s sofa. How guilty he felt for loving that sofa, for sleeping so well on it, head pressed against the cushions, falling asleep wrapped in the comforting smell of 221B.

He told himself he’d look for his own place soon. Another day.

It wasn’t until the night after the divorce was finalized – months after John moved in – that Sherlock dropped onto the sofa beside him and surprised the hell out of him by working his cold, bare feet under John’s thigh. John remembers looking sideways at him, remembers changing the channel on the telly as impossibly long toes rocked beneath his leg. He stared straight ahead for a solid minute, the screen of the telly a mottled blur before him, forcing himself to take long, even breaths. 

And then Sherlock pushed his toes in farther, deeper, pressing up against John’s bum. And all those years John had spent reminding himself that _best friends_ stopped at handshakes and hugs folded in on themselves because Sherlock was pressing into John’s arse with his toes. 

_Fuck_ it felt good, and his cock stirred, and he _wanted_ it, _wanted_ more.

 _Needed_ to remind Sherlock that he _wasn’t gay wasn’t gay wasn’t gay wasn’t gay._

And John remembers turning his head again, a slow motion slide to the left, pausing with lips parted, question unvoiced, losing himself in the maelstrom of Sherlock’s eyes.

“Feet cold?” he managed in a voice much smaller than he’d intended.

“Not really,” Sherlock answered, and there was _something_ , something in the way his voice caught, in the way he was looking at John, something that exposed his vulnerability. What it had cost him to dare this intimacy, to make this move.

“I’m not sure this is a good idea,” John managed, speaking on a single exhale. But he was reaching out, his hand steady despite his pounding heart, and he touched Sherlock’s wrist, and then looked up at him again, shaking his head, disbelieving still. 

“You know you’ve always wanted this,” Sherlock said, as his fingers closed on John’s wrist. “And you must know I have too.”

John remembers Sherlock’s smile, fleeting but sure. But most of all he remembers the warmth of Sherlock’s hand, the gentle tug.

And falling into their first kiss.

The first kiss that chased away the memory of every other first kiss. The last first kiss.

And he remembers, still, how fast things moved, lightning speed, hyper drive, brakes failing, no one saying no, no one saying stop, take it slow, make it last. He remembers more frantic kissing, the unrestrained press of thighs and hips, Sherlock’s mouth on his neck, his belly, around his cock, while his fingers moved in Sherlock’s curls, gripping his skull, and _fuck_ it shouldn’t have felt so good but it did, better than anything he’d ever felt, he swears it still. And when it was his turn, he felt his way through this act so familiar and so utterly new, with Sherlock beneath him, muscles taut, fingers pressed into the flesh of John’s shoulders, straining against his own impending orgasm, reverently breathing John’s name into the air.

It wasn’t awkward in the morning. It was the same, but better, as if the magnetic poles had finally aligned properly, adjusting their trajectories minutely. And if breakfast ended with John on his knees in front of Sherlock, Sherlock pressed against the counter with his pajama bottoms around his ankles, it was only because Sherlock said John wasn’t a morning person.

John never did look for his own place.

The lovemaking has changed over the years. John doesn’t drop to his knees on the tiled floor of the cottage kitchen, and they don’t rut against the door on adrenaline highs after close calls on dangerous cases. The lovemaking is slower now because they’re slower. They haven’t gone to seed – neither one of them is out of shape or particularly arthritic – but life has slowed around them and they unconsciously adapt to the new rhythm.

Now, when Sherlock pulls John off the sofa on a Sunday afternoon and tugs him down the passage to their bedroom, John lets him take the lead. He might have once been the instigator more times than not, but when Sherlock has sex on his mind, John’s found it always works out pleasantly to let him have his way about it. Because his way is always about John, about making John feel, making John groan out his name. For a man who is decidedly not a people person, Sherlock Holmes is most definitely a _John_ person. 

John knows this, knew this long before they first made love.

He thinks Sherlock likes to hear his name like that, in John’s sex-saturated breathy voice. So John makes him work for it. Lets Sherlock arrange him as he will, on his stomach, arse in the air, or on his back, hips canted up with pillows, or on his side, leg bent and pushed forward. And it’s easier to hold back when he’s face down, or on his side, when he can’t see Sherlock’s face, when he can close his eyes and grit his teeth and swallow the moans, make Sherlock work harder to bring him to the point where he exhales the syllables. 

_Sher_ lock.

Drawing out the first half, choking on the rest.

But today Sherlock wants to see him, and when he’s on his back, the rule is eyes open, and John comes undone in minutes. And no matter what Sherlock’s gorgeous mouth is doing, or his lovely long fingers, or his beautiful, demanding cock, it’s his eyes – his _eyes_ – that consume John, that undo John. And Sherlock’s name is on his lips, a soft, insistent mantra as the tension builds, and when his orgasm rips through him, Sherlock holds him with his eyes and they’re bigger than the two of them, more than the both of them. Exquisite synergy in the petite mort of a comfortable Sunday afternoon.

ooOoo

They made it through fifteen years together in London after John’s divorce, and they make it through the first full winter in Sussex. Winters aren’t intolerable here, but the bees aren’t moving about, and Sherlock knows he shouldn’t even remove the hive covers, so he stands outside in the wind with his hands in his coat pockets, staring at the sky. He looks rather forlorn out there with the bare trees and dormant hives, and John reminds him that they came here to Sussex intending to work together on a book. But Sherlock keeps trying to insert bee analogies into every crime, and John decides to let their editor make the final call, and they go about their business and have peaceful weeks followed by spectacular rows. Then Sherlock has a pout, and John ignores him for several hours, then makes them tea and sometimes Sherlock takes his cup from John so grudgingly and with such a pitiful sigh that all is forgiven and they both struggle not to giggle.

In short, very little has changed save the view out the window and the subject of Sherlock’s obsession.

Until one cold day in mid-February when they have an unusually productive morning of joint effort on the book. John has allowed bee talk into the current chapter and Sherlock is buoyed by it, pleased with himself for suggesting that the client, who fancied herself a queen bee, droned on and on and on. It is not particularly clever, but he counts it as a victory, for up to that point, John hadn’t even allowed the word honey into the manuscript. They go to town for lunch, and are crossing the street afterward to pick up a few things at market, when old Mrs. Kingston, who should have had her driving licence revoked years ago, runs through the stop sign on the corner and barrels down on them.

John is a bit irritable because Sherlock had been in a texting war with Mycroft for half the meal, and he isn’t paying as much attention as he should. Sherlock sees the danger first, and nearly throws John forward to the curb before hurling himself out of the way.

Nearly.

John hits the ground hard, the sound of the telltale impact of car and human being rolling over him as he falls. The sound crushes him, heart and soul. By the time he picks himself up and staggers to Sherlock, Mrs. Kingston has run into a line of parked cars and Sherlock is on the ground, curled up, conscious and gasping.

“I’m alright. I’m fine,” Sherlock says. He is squeezing his eyes shut, trying to push up with his hands to right himself. 

“Shhh. Quiet. Lie still,” soothes John, oblivious of the crowd gathering around them as he tries to assess Sherlock’s condition. He tries to be calm but he is not calm. His hands are shaking as he frames Sherlock’s face, tells him everything will be alright.

But he’s not alright. His leg is broken, his hip bruised and dislocated, and he’ll need thirty stitches to sew up the damage. Surgery to set the bone, and a plate and four screws to secure it.

They have a lovely row right there on the street with the passersby all calling 999 and trying to help while John throws off his own coat despite the cold and presses it against the lacerated thigh to try to stop the bleeding. And Sherlock will not promise to never do that again, and would John _please_ put his coat back on, and _god damn it John, you’re bleeding_.

The argument is a small piece of normal in a world suddenly tipped on its side, and it somehow, absurdly, makes John feel better.

John is not above using his medical creds to ride with Sherlock in the ambulance. He holds a thick pad of gauze against his chin with one hand and holds tight to Sherlock’s hand with the other. He waits alone, pacing, staring at his silent mobile, while Sherlock is stabilised and stitched and his hip is put back in place, and doesn’t call Mycroft and the girls until Sherlock is admitted and the surgery to set the bone and secure the plate is scheduled.

He finally lets the doctors look at his chin, and grudgingly submits to six stitches and a check-over for concussion while Sherlock floats in a morphine-induced cocoon. Naturally, the girls, who arrive together, nearly smother him, then berate him for not mentioning that he was injured too. He won’t leave Sherlock, no matter how much they cajole, no matter that Kate promises not to leave the room for even an instant while he’s gone to get some rest back at the cottage. And nothing, _nothing_ touches him like his normally stoic Abby leaning down to kiss Sherlock’s cheek, whispering her thanks to him for saving her dad, when she thinks John is sleeping in the bedside chair.

ooOoo

The accident has shaken them both by its randomness. They’ve ceased making themselves targets, survived thousands of street crossings in London, and are very nearly done in by an elderly lady in a quiet town in Sussex.

The convalescence is longer than healthy for either of them. Sherlock isn’t on his feet yet when the bees need tending again.

John thinks about it long and hard. He can look for someone to come and care for them while Sherlock is recovering. Or he can learn to do it himself. Sherlock frets and worries for all of two days before John gives in and lies in bed beside him, propped up on Sherlock’s mountain of pillows, looking at photographs of hive racks on Sherlock’s tablet, learning to distinguish pollen-filled cells from brood from honey. 

A quick peek in the hives on a mild day, he’s instructed. When the bees are flying.

The tenth of March is just such a day, and John makes Sherlock promise to stay on the sofa, and he takes his crutches and canes and hides them, and just for good measure hides the neglected walker which Sherlock refuses to use. He’s already returned the wheelchair, as Sherlock has decreed he’s not an invalid, and the little scooter Kate and Abby brought, to help him get around outside when the time is right, is still in its box. But he hides that too, all the way under the bed against the wall, then takes a critical look around the cottage, exacts another reluctant promise from Sherlock, and, with a stern look behind him, heads out to the shed.

The protective gear is still stiff from the disuse and cold of winter, but he pulls on the too-long coveralls and finds the hive tool he watched Sherlock use so often last summer to loosen the racks to inspect them. He gets the smoker down, though Sherlock had scoffed and told him it won’t be needed this time of year, and lights it, packing it with wood shavings and pine needles from the bucket beside the wood pile. He plays with it until he can make a satisfying puff of smoke pour from the spout.

He secures the veil, then pulls on the gloves. The gauntlets reach nearly to his shoulders and his hands are loose inside the gloves. For a confusing moment, he thinks they’ll need to get protective gear that fits him better, but he discards the thought, remembering he’s on temporary assignment only until Sherlock is better. He lifts the smoker and gives it another puff. 

He doesn’t realize just how much he’s playing with fire.

He shakes his head. He has no real interest in opening a hive packed with thousands of bees. Yes, he’s done far more dangerous things in his time, but this feels like going out of his way looking for trouble. 

He smiles wryly. Of course, he’s done that too. Though trouble came looking for him more often than not.

A few bees buzz around his ears as he places the smoker on one hive, pries the lid off the other and carefully lifts the inner cover. It’s too early to pull out the frames, and he certainly doesn’t want to shake up the queen, just check to be sure there is still enough honey in the honeycombed cells to get the hive through the next few weeks. God knows he’s looked at enough photographs to recognise honey-filled cells, and he is more than relieved to see them, just exactly where they should be, and to see the bees moving around inside over the combed frames.

He stares for a moment, fascinated. The bees are paying him no mind. They’re intent on their work, producing brood already, getting their numbers up to pillage the flowers that will soon bud out. He replaces the inner cover, reminding himself that people die every year from bee stings, that while he’s fond of honey, he can buy a wonderful local variety at market without having to coat himself in this coverall that makes him look like he’s at a bio-hazardous site.

Thoughts of Baskerville rise, and are, as always, successfully tucked away. He doesn’t claim to have a mind palace, but he’s done a fair job of constructing a mental safe room.

He recovers the hive, moves the smoker over on top of it, and repeats the process with the second hive.

All is well here, too, with honey reserves still evident, bees moving about. 

He reseals the second hive and suddenly remembers Sherlock inside the cottage, not-to-be-trusted Sherlock who will be dying of boredom, wondering where he is and if the bees still have wintering honey. Sherlock who will be standing on one leg, hopping along, using the back of the sofa for support. With Sherlock on his mind, John hurries to undress and put everything to rights, then goes inside to make a full report.

oo

He doesn’t know how to describe the smell of the hive.

He’s already told Sherlock that all looks well, that there are still honey cells near the top of the racks. That there are bees in the air, and bees moving about in the hives. He doesn’t know how to describe their flight. They’re just bees, for God’s sake. They buzz. They fly around erratically. No, they didn’t scare him. Of course not.

But when Sherlock, after telling him there is nothing _erratic_ about bees, asks about the _smell_ of the hive, John has to pause.

Not pleasant, but not unpleasant. Warm, perhaps. Both earthy and humid. He can’t equate it to anything in his memory – not floral, not sweet like honey, not spicy, or cloying. 

Memorable, though. Like the smell of the sofa that first night at Sherlock’s when Mary asked him to leave and the only place he cared to go was 221B.

Sherlock looks at him intently, and he feels like he’s under the great detective’s magnifying glass. He looks at him, through him, and John knows he approves of whatever it is he sees, though he doesn’t say exactly what that is.

By the middle of April, eight weeks after the accident, Sherlock is finally allowed to put some weight on the leg. He is not, however, permitted on uneven surfaces, or to take even one step without support. They’ve had visitors nearly every weekend, the girls coming to help out, to stay with Sherlock while John gets out for some down time. Lestrade and Molly visit twice, and Mycroft drops in unannounced once while they’re still there, and it’s like old times – loud and awkward, and Sherlock dominates the afternoon, and John wonders if Sherlock exudes a pheromone like the queen bee, and privately finds the thought immensely amusing. 

The guests are gone, the trees and flowers are in bloom, and the bees go about their business without the slightest bow of deference to their keeper. The dog looks at John with apparent disappointment whenever he emerges alone from the cottage, but accompanies him on his rounds nonetheless, chasing the squirrels out of his path, but keeping his distance from the bees.

Sherlock’s beekeeping calendar- a complicated spreadsheet on his tablet – indicates it’s time for a thorough inspection of the hives, and once again, John spends most of an afternoon tucked against Sherlock’s side on the sofa, studying images called up on the tablet. Sherlock speaks animatedly about identifying brood, analyzing egg laying patterns and identifying the queen. He wants photographs, of course, and John protests that he can’t use his camera with the gloves on, and when Sherlock suggests – again – that gloves aren’t actually needed, are just a precaution, John cuffs him lightly on the head.

This time, he gets Sherlock settled on a chair on the porch. He has a distant view of the hives and a firm, no-nonsense warning to stay put while John is gone inspecting them. John takes his time in the shed getting the equipment together, filling the smoker, pulling on the protective clothing and veil. 

_Steady_ he tells himself as he stands over the open hive, which is a hundred times busier than a month ago. Smoke this time, great puffs of it to encourage the bees to move downward, to confuse their communication signals. He uses the hive tool to pry a rack loose from the middle of the hive box and carefully lifts it. It is alive with bees, heavy with wax and brood and honey. He sees no signs of the damage Sherlock has trained him to look for – rodents, wax moths, hive beetles. He slips the rack back into the frame and loosens the next, working from middle to side and finding everything in order.

The queen is on the first rack he pulls from the other side. She is obvious by her size, and is surrounded by attendants as she methodically goes about her royal egg-laying business. John stares at her for a long while, understanding that she is responsible for the entire population of bees in this hive. Feeling like he’s holding a beating heart in his hands, he replaces the sixth rack and quickly inspects the remaining four.

There are too many analogies around a beating heart, still too many memories.

All is well in this hive, and in the second, and he finishes by replacing the second lid and standing there a moment, facing the cottage, smoker now in his left hand, eyes trained on Sherlock.

Sherlock, who is out of his chair, standing behind it. Holding on to the back, looking out at John with what must be a forlorn expression, a little lost boy, a man in quarantine. 

John lifts the smoker and releases a few long puffs of smoke into the air in greeting. 

By May, Sherlock is deep in physical therapy. The therapist is making daily visits to the cottage, courtesy of Mycroft, because three of the therapists at the local clinic refused to work with Sherlock again after single sessions when he nearly flew about the room, oblivious to their directions, and questioning their training and qualifications. But May is the time to begin to add additional boxes atop the hive – honey supers – for honey to harvest, and a queen excluder to prevent her from reaching these top boxes and laying eggs there. John dutifully puts the pieces together Sherlock prepared in early winter before the accident, installs the supers, and marvels at how quickly the honeybees draw out the cells on the new racks and fill them with honey and pollen. 

“The bees could swarm soon,” Sherlock says to John at the end of the first week of home therapy. He’s using a cane now, and hobbling around the cottage without assistance, but he’s had a hard day, and tonight he’s on the sofa with his leg elevated on the ottoman, and John is curled beside him with his head in his lap. John is warm, and comfortable, and lethargic. He is relieved that Sherlock is finally making progress, that the home therapist Mycroft provided seems to have come from the military and has Sherlock firmly in control. And he’s oddly enthralled by the bees, and doesn’t know how to admit this to Sherlock, not after his insistence, for years, really, that bees were fine for Sherlock but John didn’t really care a bit for them, though he’d be happy to help Sherlock eat the honey.

“Swarm? That sounds rather ominous,” he says now, with a yawn.

“Ominously boring?” Sherlock retorts. His hand is in John’s hair, massaging the top of his neck. It is a familiar gesture, a comforting touch, and Sherlock has been doing it since that first night, when John, spent and exhausted, dropped his head onto Sherlock’s thigh and closed his eyes, and Sherlock, after an awkward moment, found that the most natural, the most comfortable place to rest his hand was in John’s hair.

“It’s about reproduction,” Sherlock explains. He’s animated. Very little animates him more these days than honeybees, and reproduction is a favorite topic. “The hive can split for a variety of reasons. Sometimes there are so many bees that they can’t all sense the queen’s pheromones. And if they can’t sense a queen, the workers will make a new queen. And as there can’t be two queens in a single hive, half or more of the workers leave with the old queen and find a new home. The remaining bees stay with the new queen and go about their business.”

“So what of it, then?” John asks. “If they leave, they leave, right?”

“If we catch them at it, and see where they land and clump, we can capture them and establish a third hive,” Sherlock clarifies. He’s already called up an image on his tablet, a man-sized clump of bees hanging from a tree branch, and he positions the tablet so John can see the image. John is reminded of the crazy bee men on the telly with beards of bees on their faces. He’d already established with Sherlock, before the move to Sussex, that he’d grow his mustache back in a heartbeat if Sherlock even _thought_ about doing that.

It is a threat Sherlock does not take lightly.

“Why do they do that?” John asks. “All of them clumping together?”

“They follow the queen,” Sherlock explains. “Where she goes, they go.”

John smiles, and squeezes Sherlock’s hand meaningfully, but Sherlock seems oblivious to the analogy, though John knows he’s only pretending to be obtuse.

“So, what you’re saying then is if they swarm, we wave goodbye and wish them well,” John says after again considering the rather frightening image on the tablet. “Because there is no ‘we’ about chasing down swarms of bees, Sherlock. You aren’t even allowed to walk off the paved walkway yet, and if I get injured chasing down a swarm of bees, we’ll never hear the end of it from the girls.”

The threat of John’s daughters’ wrath seems to give Sherlock some pause.

“What if they clump on a tree overhanging the walkway?”

“No.”

Sherlock’s thumb and forefinger rub the top of John’s neck, just exactly where he likes it, and John drops his face onto Sherlock’s lap, and groans out his pleasure.

“And if I agree to hold the ladder and let you climb it?” Sherlock’s voice is oh-so-casual.

John sighs and decides to hide the ladders.

They are fortunate – well, John thinks so, anyway – that the bees don’t swarm this year. Sherlock worries about it, but John assures him the hives are active and he finds the queens each time he checks. It’s a banner year for honey, it seems, and he wonders if Sherlock is set up to work this much production.

And while John tries to pretend that he’s not interested in the bees, that he’s only helping out because Sherlock can’t, he knows that he isn’t quite fooling Sherlock. He cannot help his reaction, when Sherlock is able – finally – to don his gear and give the hives a look. He warns Sherlock about the weight of the racks, and tells him to be careful, and to use plenty of smoke as the bees are very active with the entire garden and meadow in bloom. Sherlock spends much more time outside than he needs to, considering how well John has looked after things. John finds himself wondering about the bees, and nearly aches to check on them, but Sherlock is so eager to get back to the business of beekeeping, so alive in this bee world John has always considered to be his and his alone. He’s goes on and on about the growing pollen stores, and is so ridiculously overjoyed when a second honey super is needed on the first hive, that John leaves him to it and makes a go of returning to his writing. But he can’t keep himself from the window, watching Sherlock go about the routine business of bee maintenance, and Sherlock sees him there before he can move away, and follows John’s lead by giving him a puff or two of smoke in greeting.

A week later, near the end of June, a package arrives at their door and inside it John finds coveralls and gloves and a veil, a second smoker, his own hive tool. He places the box on the coffee table and sits on the sofa, removing the items piece by piece, examining each, a smile on his face, and he falls in love with Sherlock Holmes all over again. 

He didn’t even know you could buy bee coveralls in khaki.

Sherlock is out putting together an experimental set of racks, each with different foundation material, intent on proving the bees prefer the traditional wax, and John slips on one of the new gloves. It fits…well, like a glove should. His fingers reach the tips and don’t swim inside, and he thinks how much easier it will be to handle the racks and tools than with the gloves designed to fit Sherlock’s large hands. The coverall doesn’t sag at the crotch, and he doesn’t have to bunch up the cuffs at ankle and wrist. 

He realizes, then, that Sherlock has finally succeeded in dressing him. 

It is no small thing that Sherlock has done this. He has not always read John well. John has long accused him of buying birthday and Christmas gifts to suit Sherlock’s own wants and needs, rather than John’s. It is important that the beekeeping gear has come now, that it was not foisted upon John in the beginning, before he was ready, when he was still indifferent to the lure of the hive. Sherlock has been watching him, reading him. Sherlock has changed since coming to Sussex, but John has changed too, and it is cosmically fortunate that they are looking _at_ each other instead of _past_ each other, that there is this new thing that is not crime but is still a mystery, a certain kind of slow motion adventure.

He closes his laptop, slips the hive tool into his back pocket where the weight of the metal feels perfectly familiar, and steps outside to have a look at hive number two.

ooOoo

By the first of September, John knows they are doomed.

Still just the two hives, but they’ve put together the parts for two more, and will fill one of them with an order of honeybees in the spring and save the other for a swarm.

John spends an entire sunny week in August recording how many bees visit a particular chicory plant along one of their favorite walks on the Downs. Sherlock is nearby, sitting cross-legged in a field of Echinacea, watching the bees alight on the purple cone flowers, the camera John has given him catching the minute detail of the pollen baskets on their back legs, the proboscis and mandibles, the wings at rest and in flight. Here, in Sussex, in their retirement, Sherlock is slowing down, but just enough. Just enough to capture the gorgeous detail of a forager bee’s full pollen basket, to bring it up on his tablet instead of storing it away in his mind palace, to share it with John.

Another week is spent in a field of wildflowers of different colours, collecting data to determine if bees prefer a certain colour of flower when many are available. Sherlock doesn’t pay the least attention or give any credence to past studies by other scientists. He needs his own data, must make his own conclusions. And while John feels there are too many variables they cannot control – _is a blue chicory as sweet as an orange poppy?_ – he nonetheless records his numbers, then falls asleep beside Sherlock in the warm sunshine, and does not remember why he resisted this move to the country for so long.

In September, it is time to harvest the honey. They’ve a banner crop this year, and leave plenty for the bees, but still put up pints and pints of it. John watched Sherlock a bit the previous year, but this time they sit across from one another, cutting the wax cappings off the combs, cranking the extractor, filling the jars. 

“I suppose it’s honey for everyone for Christmas,” John says with a laugh as they survey the jars on countertop and table. Sherlock has insisted they separate the output of the two hives, though John cannot taste a bit of difference. They clean up and drop onto the sofa, Sherlock stretched out with his legs in John’s lap. John massages his left ankle and calf as Sherlock groans his appreciation. He’s lying on his back with his bent arm slung over his forehead, chin pointing up, neck stretched out from here to forever. 

John continues the massage as he looks his fill, wondering again, as he has so many times, how it is that he’s here in Sussex with Sherlock Holmes, tight and secure in their cottage and their relationship, when thirty-one years ago Sherlock jumped off a roof to his death, and twenty-nine years ago he married Mary Morstan, and became a husband and a father in nearly the same breath.

“Stop thinking. You’re keeping me awake,” Sherlock grumbles from the sofa, and John squeezes his calf then tickles the back of his knee, and Sherlock tugs John down on top of him, none too gently, his grip still strong and sure. John rests his arms on the cushions on either side of Sherlock’s narrow body and holds Sherlock’s eyes with his own.

He knows what he sees. The same man he’s known for more than thirty years. Brilliant, scarred, rash, impetuous, beautiful. Dark curls flecked with grey now, wrinkles making his eyes somehow wiser, skin darker, tanned by the summer sun on the South Downs. A healthier Sherlock, less manic, more at peace with himself. But still Sherlock. Still his.

He leans down and kisses Sherlock’s mouth. They do not kiss casually, chastely. Each kiss is meaningful, a message of sorts. Lips move, tongues taste. Honey, fresh and floral and earthy. 

Sherlock smiles. “You taste of bees,” he says, straining upward to catch John’s lips again.

“You’ve ruined me.” John smiles, and rests his face in the crook of Sherlock’s neck. “I have a book to finish.”

“The one I kept ruining with bee analogies?” Sherlock says. His arms are on John’s back now, sliding down to his waist, his arse. He pulls John against him and John rolls his hips slowly, breath catching, breathing in Sherlock’s scent.

He is reminded, suddenly, of the scent of the hive.

“I’ve changed my mind about that,” he says. “We need more bee analogies for the book. There aren’t nearly enough.”

Sherlock laughs, a low rumble against him, and John smiles and presses his lips to Sherlock’s pulse point. Sherlock’s arms tighten around him again.

“In a single hive, there may be fifty to eighty thousand worker bees, but only a thousand or two drones and only one queen.”

He is not telling him anything John doesn’t already know. The bee books are in the bedroom, the sitting room, the loo, and John’s read them so many times now that he knows it all by heart. 

Sherlock continues. “Worker bees progress through a variety of roles – housekeeper, nursemaid, construction worker, grocer, undertaker, guard and forager.”

“I _know,_ Sherlock,” John says. He’s wedged himself between the back of the sofa and Sherlock now, one of his favorite positions. He’s tired from all the honey harvesting. His shoulder is sore from the cranking, and he snuggles down even deeper. 

“Yet you don’t recognise yourself in the tale of the worker bee,” Sherlock admonishes, softly, his breath ghosting over John’s ear.

“Undertaker?” John works his hand in Sherlock’s curls and rubs their foreheads together.

“Semantics,” says Sherlock. 

John lets it go, and considers. He is those things, all of those things. 

“I suppose you fancy yourself the queen, then?” John asks.

Sherlock snorts. It is an indelicate sound and John swallows an answering snort of his own. 

“A queen has a single purpose,” Sherlock recites. “On her nuptial flight, she may mate with as many as a dozen drones, and stores enough sperm to last her lifetime. She can lay as many as two thousand eggs a day. She spends the rest of her life laying eggs and exuding pheromones to keep the hive knit together.”

“Well, there goes the Sherlock queen theory,” John says. “She’s not the brain of the hive after all.” 

“The whole hive is the brain,” says Sherlock. “A collective. There’s a certain synergy about it, if you will. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.”

“I know what synergy is, you git.” John closes his eyes and sighs. “But you definitely do have pheromones. You set them on me from day one, and you know it.”

“Hmm. John pheromones,” says Sherlock. He wraps an arm around John, massages his bad shoulder. “But if one of us has to be the queen, I might point out that you’ve reproduced, and I have not.”

“Semantics,” John says. 

He considers adding that worker bees kill to protect the queen, the hive, but he lets it go.

It’s been a long, long time since John killed the cabbie, since Sherlock sent Magnussen to his grave. Another lifetime, another reality.

It was a world without bees, and Sussex, and the South Downs. A world where they danced around each other without touching, a world of side steps and missteps and far too many goodbyes.

John falls asleep with his head on Sherlock’s chest. The beat of his heart is the thrum of the hive. It is John’s security blanket, and it keeps the nightmares at bay.

ooOoo

_\- For so work the honey bees, creatures that by a rule in nature teach the act of order to a peopled kingdom. -_  
William Shakespeare 


End file.
